Dr. Wajira Balasooriya is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Biotechnology at Wayamba University and served as the head of the department and faculty coordinator for quality assurance from 2017 to 2020. She is the editor of the Soil Science Society of Sri Lanka at present.

Balasooriya possesses B.Sc. (agriculture) and M.Sc. (agriculture) degrees from the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, and M.Sc. (environmental sanitation) and Ph.D. degrees from Ghent University, Belgium. She had postdoctoral research experiences at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, and at the Department of Environmental Studies and Sciences at the University of Winnipeg, Canada.

Balasooriya's research focuses on microbiota in the environment and their applications in soil fertility management, environmental biotechnology and other disciplines. Recently her work is focused on soil and aquatic microalgae as biofertilizers for paddies and for wastewater treatment. She serves as the editor of the Journal of the Soil Science Society Sri Lanka and is a member of the Sri Lankan Society for Microbiology and the Institute of Biology Sri Lanka.